State shows area projects the money

Published 10:06 pm, Saturday, December 10, 2011

The nearly $700 million in economic development awards announced last week by Gov. Andrew Cuomo involve a wide range of projects, from a grape museum in the western part of the state to a green roof on a Capital Region private school.

RENSSELAER — The Port of Albany completed its new wharf on the Albany side of the Hudson River in the autumn.

Now, the port district commission will get $11.5 million in state funds to replace the last of the original wharf on the Rensselaer side of the river.

Some 600 feet of wooden wharf dating from the 1920s will be replaced with a concrete and steel wharf similar to that on the Albany side.

The project will double the usable space on the Rensselaer side, and port officials expect the move to increase barge traffic, especially shipments of aggregates for cement producers in the New York City area.

ALBANY — The University at Albany's RNA Institute will receive slightly more than $2 million of the $63 million allocated to Capital Region projects.

The RNA Institute, which is a relatively new lab at UAlbany, does cutting-edge research into RNA, also known as ribonucleic acid.

RNA is important to the medical community because it is known to turn genes and proteins in the body on and off. Scientists believe they can create drugs to fight HIV and cancer by unlocking the secrets of RNA.

That's where this state money comes in. UAlbany wants to create a biomedical translational research program at the RNA Institute that would essentially take the basic research developed at the institute and commercialize the technology into helpful drugs and medical remedies that would lead to the creation of new biotech companies and grow jobs in the region.

The money would be used for planning these commercialization programs, which are expected to require additional lab space, equipment, training and staffing across the region.

TROY — The state is kicking in $2.5 million toward the cost of an unusual parking garage that will be built as part of the ongoing City Station project at the southeast corner of downtown Troy, near the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute campus.

The two-level garage will be built into the slope of the hill at Congress and Ferry streets. The parking will serve retail outlets and student apartments in a recently built structure, and will be built concurrently with a second apartment and retail building.

Jeff Buell of the United Group of Cos., the Troy-based company behind City Station, said the garage is necessary to lure new retailers. The garage, with about 220 spaces, could also support additional City Station development, including a movie theater.